


petals on the ground

by tenfeetdrowning



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: F/M, hanahaki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-11 09:59:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12932862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenfeetdrowning/pseuds/tenfeetdrowning
Summary: I have loved you with a love that could grow flowers.It is, and will always be, never more than just love.





	1. lily

It all started before summer, when Juyeon thought that he had caught a dry cough but something kept tugging at the back of his throat. It was as if no matter how much he coughed there was something inside that he couldn’t let out, tugging at his lungs and the air in it, heavy. So he coughed and coughed, for a week or two, and took a few spoons of cough syrup—and everything finally came down to this, to a very sunny day in the early summer, nineteen-year-old Juyeon coughing in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, into the washbasin. It took him three or four coughs until something rolled out of his mouth and fell to the bottom of the washbasin, all pastel pink and blue and yellow, almost as gentle as air.  
Juyeon’s eyes shifted to the mirror in front of him and watched himself cough. Flower petals. He was coughing up flower petals.  
All pink, and blue, and yellow.  
On a very sunny summer day, nineteen-year-old Juyeon kept coughing, cough after cough, just to see if he really was coughing up flowers, and to see if he were to die after a few coughs. 

 

. . .

 

He didn’t die. After a few coughs he was left standing in the bathroom with a bunch of flower petals, in the washbasin, in his hands, on the floor. Juyeon stood still for a while, staring at his own reflection in the mirror, grasping a handful of flowers in his hand—some a bit wet, some perfectly dry. There was something funny about how pretty it all looked. Flower petals all over the place, under the bathroom lights. It was such a pretty scene. And it was him who coughed it all up.  
He wrapped them all in a tissue, careful not to leave any behind. In one throw he threw all of them into the garbage can.  
He had often thought about how he was going to die. He thought of falling off of the stairs, getting hit by a car, being in a plane crash. He thought about dying a silly death, too, like choking on a jelly bean or running out of oxygen under his own blanket. Juyeon stared at the grey, steely garbage can and the flower petals inside it. It would be a very pretty death.  
Then he sat in front of his computer, legs folded up against his chest, trying to think up words to describe everything that just happened in the span of fifteen minutes. 

_I coughed up flowers_  
Can dry cough produce flowers  
I’m not sick but  
Flowers coming out of your mouth  
Coughing flowers? help? 

He went with the last one for the search engine. The room was awfully quiet as he scrolled through the results.  
Juyeon spent the rest of the day reading about the Hanahaki disease. A condition where you cough up flower petals and flowers grow in your lungs. May be cured through surgery, and may be deadly if it isn’t done.  
Caused by severe one-sided love.  
Juyeon read about it over and over again, once every time he felt like it was a dream. The light from his computer screen tired him out and he went to eat lunch thinking about whether the lunch would make all the flowers in his lungs die out (and then remembered that food, in fact, does not instantly go into your lungs), read a few pages of his favourite comic book, picked his sister up from school, and opened the door when his father came home from work.  
He didn’t stop to think about one-sided love. He knew it well enough.  
Lee Juyeon coughed a bit more of the pink, yellow, and blue flowers before he went to bed and slept hoping that it would all become a dream. 

 

. . .

 

“You know, Juyeon, you look awful.”  
He playfully groaned. “Don’t rub it in my face.”  
“I mean you look sick.”  
“I didn’t have enough sleep.”  
“Stayed up for a game?”  
“Mm.”  
“Against whom?”  
“Younghoon.”  
“Oh.” She put her bag in front of him. “Well you two need to stop trading your sleep for online game wins.”  
Juyeon looked up to look at her, eyes half closed against the sun. She was wearing the same denim jacket that he’d seen a hundred times—and this was a secret, but he’d bought another denim jacket that exactly looked like the one she was wearing. Just because he saw it in the streets and it instantly reminded him of the one she often wore. Behind her he could make out a line of trees with all of their glittering leaves. No flowers. It was a good thing. He’d had enough of it.  
He went back putting his head on his arm, half lying down flat on the table. “Where’re you going?” he mumbled.  
“Newspaper club.”  
“No class?”  
“All done.”  
“Want me to walk you there?”  
“Nope.”  
Juyeon grinned. _You never want me to walk you anywhere_. She sat in front of him, behind her bag, her fingers tapping the surface of the table like she was waiting for something. _I always want to walk you anywhere_ , he thought. “I was wondering if I should buy some lunch first,” she said.  
“You should. It’s chicken sandwich today.”  
“Yeah? You’d had some?”  
“I’m full. Eat it for me.”  
He hadn’t eaten anything but he did feel full. Maybe it was one of the side effects of having flowers grow inside your body. You feel full. There’s something filling you up. It was only his second day of coughing up flowers.  
“I’ll get going,” she said after five minutes of sitting across each other, basking in the sun. “You should sleep. Properly. You’d die living like this.”  
Juyeon laughed. “Bye.” I’d die, but not due to lack of sleep. _I slept a lot last night_ , he thought as he watched her back walk away. _I slept a lot._  
_If I were to die soon, I’d die prettily.  
With lots of flowers, and a sigh after a cough._

Juyeon buried his head in his arms after her back completely disappeared from his sight. That day was as hot as the previous one and he wasn’t sleepy, but he slept anyway, sweating under his hoodie as if he was sweating out a fever.  
That was the love that had him coughing up flowers. Always sitting on the other side of the table, always just stopping by, always ready to go somewhere else. 

 

. . .

 

His little sister opened the door for him when he went home. “You’re late, Juyeon,” she said with a frown. Juyeon grinned and ruffled her hair. “I’m sorry. Did Dad pick you up?”  
“Yeah. Dad’s home early. He’s in the shower and we’ll order dinner today.”  
“I can cook if Dad’s tired.”  
“It’s okay,” his father shouted from his room, “we can all rest today. Jihee wants Chinese food, what do you want?”  
Thirteen-year-old Jihee skipped her way to the couch, her long hair making a trail of shampoo scent behind her. Juyeon sat next to her, leaning back into the couch, sloppily braiding his little sister’s hair as she flipped through the channels on TV. His father went out of his room when Adventure Time came on. “What do you want to eat?”  
His sister’s shampoo had this strong, flowery scent that oozed into his lungs. It built up like water pouring into a jug. There was something else building up too, there at the back of his throat. His cough. Juyeon held it back, his eyes teary, chest heaving up and down. “I don’t really want dinner.”  
His father frowned. “You sure? You must be hungry, though?”  
“I’m not hungry today,” he answered, smiling. He took his backpack with one hand and put it over his right shoulder. “I’m just a bit tired.”  
“I’ll eat all your dumplings,” Jihee chimed from the couch. Juyeon laughed. “Eat all you want, you’re short.”  
“Hey!”  
He reached his room fast enough before he coughed. Juyeon sat on the floor with his back against the door, coughing his lungs out. A river of flower petals fell onto his lap—absolutely pretty, and absolutely frightening. It didn’t feel real. It felt like watching a tree in full bloom being knocked by a strong wind on a spring day. 

There was a knock too, on the door behind him. “Juyeon? You okay?” His father.  
“Yeah,” he answered.  
“You had your cough syrup? You sure you don’t want dinner?”  
“Yeah.”  
“We can go to the hospital right now, if you want.”  
Juyeon squeezed the petals on his lap, trying not to cough more. “No.”  
“Okay,” his father said, clearly still a bit worried. “Tell me if you need anything.”  
_I need_ , he coughed, _this horror movie_ , and coughed again, _to stop_.  
“Okay,” he replied. 

Juyeon stood up and locked his door before he walked to his bed, making a line of flowers. The cough wouldn’t stop. It felt like he was about to cough up his brains too. At the hundredth cough, he began to cry.  
Juyeon lay on his bed, uncontrollably crying and uncontrollably coughing. It was almost his third day of coughing up flowers.


	2. cherry blossoms

_How many people have contracted the Hanahaki disease?_  
Juyeon typed into his phone’s search engine, on the bus, in a morning a few days after. He stared at the number that came up as a result. Currently, there have been a hundred recorded cases of Hanahaki disease.   
Juyeon thought about the university, the city, the country, and the number of people that he’d met in life. A hundred. It sounded like a very small number, a number very unlikely to have him as a part of it. Yet he was there. He would be a part of it if he told the hospital what happened to him.   
Severe one-sided love. All those people must have really been in love to be able to grow flowers in their lungs. He wondered if the people that made them contract the disease looked, walked, and sounded like Deka. Juyeon frowned with his forehead pressed against the window, thinking.

Deka was smaller than he was, the top of her head reaching just about his shoulders. She had big eyes and tanned skin that looked really nice under the sun, and he liked her eyes for some reason. They were big, and dark, and they rarely looked into his, but he liked it when they did.  
And then—and what else?  
She made him feel like he wanted to reach out to her and ask her about how she was doing and how her day went. She was always out and about. Going places that he didn’t go to and never stayed longer than just stopping by where he was. It was always him who reached out and made small talk, just to make her stay a bit longer. He didn’t mind. Was it love if he didn’t mind reaching out, and running to her, and walking where she wanted to walk?  
Was that the kind of love that could grow flowers?  
Juyeon looked out of the window, earphones humming his favourite song. He didn’t know how much in love he was to be able to grow flowers in his lungs, too. 

He ran into her when he got off the bus. She had her usual denim jacket on and her backpack over her shoulder. Juyeon grinned, forgetting the fact that he was a flower-coughing machine for a second, and tugged on her backpack. “Hey.”  
She turned around. “Hey. Did you skip your first class?”   
She really was as small as what he remembered. Juyeon wasn’t big, but he was tall and he played basketball, so he significantly towered over her, like a tree. He liked it. Her hands were small, too. His own hands looked big and awkward if he saw them after he saw her hands. He’d never held her hands, but he was pretty sure that they would disappear in an instant if he held them. Hunchback holding Esmeralda’s hands.  
“I did,” he replied. “How did you know?”  
“Kevin told me. Your dad’s going to kill you.”  
“He loves me too much for that,” Juyeon sang.  
“Well I’ll kill you.” She pushed his right shoulder. Juyeon laughed. “You love me too much for that, too.”   
“You wish.”  
Juyeon stared at her, the eleven o’clock sun falling all over her face and the wind blowing against her shirt. There was nothing extraordinarily different about her—she walked just like everyone else, one foot in front of the other, turned her head the way everyone else did, held onto her backpack the way every other human did. He didn’t understand why he melted like ice on a summer day and why it was always a good day when he got to see her, but it happened.   
Like ice upon sunshine, and it was always a good day.

Her eyes stared back at him, head tilted a little. “You’re smiling,” she said.  
“Yeah?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Well, I like you.”  
She knew that. He knew that she knew. He’d told her that a couple of times.  
She rolled her eyes again. “You always say that.”

In front of the campus, during study sessions, outside the convenience store. When they ate lunch together, when they had dinner together, when they had cheap sandwiches for breakfast. In the train, on the bus. Everywhere.  
There was no particular reason. It just wasn’t tiring. It was nice to say that.  
“I know,” he said. Juyeon glanced at his watch. “I have time to walk you to class.”

Deka laughed. “It’s ten minutes to your class. I’ll see you later.”  
I’ll see you later, he thought as he waved at her. I’ll tell you I like you again if I have to.   
His chest was tight. It might be the flowers. It might be the way she skipped her way to class, not once turning back. 

. . .

The first time he’d told her that he loved her, ironically, was on a very pretty spring day—when flowers from all shades of pink and white began blooming on trees.  
It was his first year of college and hers, too. He was a little younger, and far, far more stupid. He knew that the girl who sat next to him every week in his English class had different eyes when she looked at this other guy from the year above them. He knew she had the same guy as her phone wallpaper, he knew who he was, he saw them walk home together once. Or twice. He knew from the start that there was no way she was going to look at him with the same kind of eyes.  
But he liked how she lit up when the guy she liked passed by, and how she fixed her eyes on her book in class. He liked lying down on his desk with eyes half-closed, looking at her and the window next to her as it poured a flood of sunshine on her, on her hands, and her black eyes that turned golden when the sun touched them.  
He asked for her name after class a month after they first met. She stood still at the doorway, eyes bright, round, open. Looking at him. “Deka,” she said.   
He knew that it was never going to be the same with her. It was a good day. 

That good day in the beginning of the spring led to another good day at the end. It was bright and sunny, an inch away from summer and that year’s summer was a lot like this year’s summer—one streak of sunshine looking exactly like the other. He was sitting at the end of the stairs. She stood in front of him, towering over him for once. It was almost time to go home. She was as pretty as ever.  
They were talking about everything. Anything that she wanted to talk about. They talked about the heat, and classes, about going home, and her plan to go to the beach. At some point she rested the side of her head against the wall and stared at him. He couldn’t hold back a smile. Every single day when she decided to look at him in the eye was good.  
You know what, he thought. “I like you,” he said. “I really like you a lot.”

It got really quiet after that, and not the terrifying quiet. There was a gentle wall of silence wrapping the both of them. One sitting, one standing, and fine dust dancing in the sunshine between them.   
“But I don’t like you that way,” she said.  
“I know.”  
“Is it okay?”  
“Are you okay?”  
She looked at the ground. Her right foot twirled like it followed her thoughts. “I like that, though,” she muttered, eyes looking at an entirely different direction, feeble shades of pink spreading from her ears to the peak of her nose. “You saying that you like me.”

They walked home together after that, despite his house being on the opposite side of the town. It was the first of their many walks together. It was the first of the many times he’d told her he liked her.   
She was still in love with guy a year above them. It didn’t matter. He was still in love with her, the whole time.

I love you, he said, playfully, after his basketball match. You look really pretty with your hair like that, when they sat across each other, doing homework. I like you a lot, in front of her house.   
And many, many, many more. 

Juyeon lifted his head, blinking a few times to adjust his eyes with the blinding sun. The professor was still talking, going on and on about something he knew he could find later in some book—and he looked outside to find Deka sitting on one of the benches under the birch trees outside his class. Juyeon smiled slightly and leaned back into his chair. _I love you_ , he mentally said as she put on her earphones, jotting something down on her notebook. _I love you so much, it’s going to kill me one way or another_.

. . .

He found her sitting at the same bench when his class ended. Juyeon walked to her, mouth grinning wide, heart brimming to the edge. “You wanna go home?”  
She glanced at something behind him and gave him a complicated look. “Actually.”  
Juyeon turned around. There was Seokmin, the guy from the year above them walking just behind him, a few feet away from them. Deka’s feet shifted nervously under the bench. 

Juyeon smiled.   
He knew. He knew very well.

“Good luck,” he said, winking at her before he walked away. Deka nodded, one eye looking at him and the other watching Seokmin. Juyeon stopped walking after he was far enough from the two of them and he turned around to watch, leaning against the warm brick wall.   
It was a pretty sight. Deka stood up before he even reached her. She was smiling, eyes full of light and happiness. Seokmin stood facing her and they talked for a bit. It was too far for him to hear their conversation, but he could see her cheeks slowly tinge pink, like she had just run for a bit. Juyeon knew he had a sad smile on his face. It was a look that she had never had when she looked at him.  
Maybe that was what love looked like. Love that only figuratively grew flowers.   
“Good luck,” he whispered. “I mean it.” _I love you. I mean that too_.  
Juyeon walked down the quiet path behind the building that made another route to the bus stop. He occasionally coughed. No one would see.   
At the end of the path he coughed up small cherry blossom flowers. They were white, with a faint flush of pink. He held them in between his fingers for a bit as he waited for the bus, thinking about how the pink of the cherry blossom flower reminded him a bit of the tinge on her cheeks.  
There was nothing to do—no wishing for a miracle, no hoping, no nothing. Every single flower that he coughed up was as real as himself. And even after nailing that into his mind, not a bit of him wanted to blame her for that. She was beautiful as she was, even if it wasn’t him that she was in love with.   
The bus came. Jihee texted him, asking where he was. He got onto the bus, half of him still thinking about how pretty she was, how happy she looked, and how his knees melted into a gooey, jelly mess whenever she glanced at him. Where she was, what she was doing, and if she still looked as happy now as she was when he left her just fifteen minutes ago. I’ll pick you up in a while, he texted back. Juyeon pressed his forehead against the bus window, the heat of the early summer sun seeping through into the skin of his forehead.  
It was pretty, every single moment that he’d spent deliriously in love. Juyeon closed his eyes. Thank you for making even my sickness beautiful, he thought. 

 

. . .

 

“You sure you’re okay accompanying me like this?”

Tall, handsome. A smile that looked more like a grin. Hair cropped close to his head, eyes that disappear behind their lids when he laughed. It took her a while to answer him.  
“Yeah, sure,” Deka said, smiling. She wasn’t sure if the smile that she’d given him looked all right. But he smiled back anyway, so it should be fine.   
And hell, it was pretty, his smile. She had to look down so she wouldn’t blush.  
“Thanks a lot. Everyone else is so busy this time of the year.” 

Deka looked at his shoes, and then at her own. His sneakers were black and white, with traces of soil and scratches here and there. Hers were light blue. She thought that they made a pretty picture—his sneakers and hers facing one another—and the thought of it made her cheeks warm.   
She had spent a whole year staring at those sneakers and the person in it. This was the person that freshman Deka fell in love with, after a week being in the newspaper club, and this person standing in front of her was still the same person that she fell in love with a year ago. Just a lot, a lot closer.   
He was always really nice, Seokmin. Every room was a level brighter when he walked inside. Everyone said his name like a song, like a favourite word. Maybe it was what made her fall in love. It wasn’t just because he was her favourite—it was the fact that he was everyone’s favourite. It was impossible to not love someone that radiated so much warmth and happiness.  
She looked up and looked at the side of his face. This was the closest that she had ever been in the past year.   
Warm. Not because of the early summer weather. It was because she was standing in front of a literal human sun.

“We should go now.” He put his backpack over his left shoulder. “You don’t mind motorcycles, do you?”  
Do I ever mind anything when I’m with you?  
“No,” Deka said with a laugh. He walked in front of her, his back filling her sight, the back of his head looking more like chestnut brown than dark brown under the sun. She couldn’t help but notice that his shoulders looked like it would be a nice place to lean to, and that he had a faint, woody scent of a man’s cologne when he turned around. 

Seokmin was everything, everything, everything.  
Everything, everything, everything.

 

. . .

 

Jihee was sitting in front of her school entrance when Juyeon arrived. She stood up at once, sulking, her summer uniform all creased and the ribbon on her neck loose. “You took so long.”  
Juyeon shrugged. “Don’t you have extracurricular activities? Tennis club?”  
“No! I told you this morning.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah!” Jihee stomped her feet. “You never pay attention.”  
He frowned. Well, I’m sorry but it’s hard to pay attention while choking on an orchid.  
Juyeon put out his arm, nodding at the bag in his sister’s hands. “Let me carry that.”  
Jihee, of course, pushed the bag into his grip and began walking.   
“You don’t want to buy snacks on the way home?”  
She turned to him, frowning. “Is that a cheap attempt to make peace?”  
“Do you want snacks or not?”  
Jihee grunted. “Rice cakes.”

They stopped at a rice cake stall on the side of the road. Juyeon bit into his rice cakes slowly. His sister, the rice cake-eating monster, was eating from her second plate.   
“I thought you didn’t have tennis sessions today. Why are you eating so much?”  
“You offered to buy me.”  
Juyeon rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry. My mistake.”  
Jihee stopped to retie her ponytail, mouth still chewing on rice cakes. “You only have one week left of picking me up, though.”  
“Why?”  
She stared at him like he’d just said something very dumb. “Summer vacation?”  
Right, Juyeon thought, swallowing rice cakes that suddenly tasted like rubber. He’d have the rest of the summer off too, soon. Which meant less scheduled times to see Deka.  
But it also meant taking her—and Jihee, too—to the beach, and going fishing, and visiting festivals. Eating ice cream, racing with the heat. Summer picnics with their friends. Summer songs, her laughing with summer songs playing in the background, and the summer sun everywhere.   
He was all right with the flowers coming out of his mouth. He just wanted to live. Just a little bit longer so he could take her to the beach and everywhere she wanted to go, everything she wanted to see.   
“Let’s go home.” Jihee said, wiping the stain of red sauce at the end of her mouth. She held onto his arm as they walked home, a sign that she’d decided to make peace after food. 

Time flew. Summer came faster than tomorrow. 

 

. . .


	3. dandelion

Juyeon’s eyes fluttered open. His whole body was burning hot under the blanket. The room around him managed itself from a blur into a clear picture. He blinked a few times, his right arm still tucked under his head, and the gap between his curtains allowed a streak of light into his room. Outside the muffled sound of the TV and his sister asking for waffles echoed.  
_“And today, our summer special—”_  
Juyeon got up, one foot before the other, and turned the air conditioner off. He rubbed his eyes in front of the mirror and coughed, flowers falling down to the blue rug.  
It was really summer, now.

. . .

“Hello, Juyeon,” his father chimed while his hands were busy flipping waffles. “You want waffles?”  
“No.”  
“Pecan waffles.”  
“Okay.”  
His father filled another plate for him and pushed it next to Jihee’s, who was already eating. Juyeon dug into his waffles with a fork, feeling nauseous. But they were warm and syrupy, and the pecans broke under his teeth with a familiar sound, and his tongue gradually remembered the taste. It was good. Juyeon found himself smiling as he finished his share. His father caught sight of his smile and grinned. “Good, right?”  
Juyeon nodded, still slightly smiling. “Yeah.”  
His father ruffled his head. “Good.”  
Jihee was also done with her waffles. She shuffled to the sink to wash the dishes, next to their father. “I’m going to the beach today,” she said.  
“Yeah? Is Juyeon taking you?”  
“No.” Jihee frowned. “Dad, I have my own friends.”  
Juyeon gulped down a glass of water. “I’m going to the beach too today.”  
“See?” His father shrugged. “Go together, you two.”  
Jihee sulked for a moment before she turned around dramatically. “Okay. But I have my own friends.”  
Juyeon laughed. _I have my own friends too_ , he thought. _One of them I’m in love with_. He got up from his chair and ruffled Jihee’s hair the way his father ruffled his, just to annoy her. Jihee screamed. Juyeon laughed even louder, and walked away to pack his things. 

. . .

Everyone who didn’t leave the city were there at the beach. Deka, Younghoon, Jihee’s friends. Kevin. Some of their friends. Jihee rushed away from his side as soon as she saw her friends. Juyeon didn’t mind. Younghoon was waving at him, and next to him was Deka. Juyeon waved at her. She didn’t wave back. She never waved back. She looked at him over her right, t-shirt-clad shoulder, without blinking—like she was waiting too see where he’d go, and what he’d do.  
_I’m going to you_ , he thought with a chuckle as he walked, like they were having a telepathic conversation. _Have I never gone to you?_  
They counted the number of people, and named everyone who was there, and talked about many other things. Cold drinks were shared. Then it got hotter, and hotter, and everyone ran to the beach, out into the sun and the cold sea. Everyone except Deka and him.  
Deka sat next to him, drinking from her bottle of soda, watching his face. He felt obliged to look somewhere else when she stared at everything he had on his face other than his eyes. His cheeks were exceptionally hot, somehow.  
“You didn’t come with Jihee?” She eventually asked.  
“Yeah. But she’s with her friends.”  
Deka smiled. “She’s too big to be Juyeon’s little sister now.”  
“I suppose.” Juyeon grinned, biting on his straw, staring at the blue sea that gleamed green. They sat side by side, Deka’s head slightly leaning against his right arm, under the umbrella. “It’s hot,” Deka mumbled, pressing the cold bottle against her forehead, slightly touching his arm. “I know,” he said. “The sea’s pretty, though.”  
They fell silent for a while, watching Kevin doing stupid things and falling into the water. Everyone laughed before helping him to get back on his feet. 

“When you tell me I’m pretty,” she began in almost a whisper, “is it the same pretty you use when you talk about the sea, and the sky, and the world?”  
Juyeon mulled over her words, staring as far as he could into the sea. “No,” he replied after thinking.  
“No?”  
“It’s the same pretty I use,” he said, realizing that his tongue was now rough from the soda, “when I talk about flowers.”

Some of their friends ran back to their spot under the umbrella to get some drink or a towel. Juyeon stood up and ran, barefoot, to the sea. The cold stung on his burnt skin and he walked on, and on, and on, until his feet no longer touched the floor of the sea and his arms had to row. The water felt heavy when it pressed on his chest. It pushed him back when he tried to push farther on. But he rowed, and put his head under the waves, the salty sea water filling his mouth and throat. Some got into his nose. He didn’t mind. Maybe they could kill the flowers in his lungs without erasing completely the feelings that made them grow. He lifted up his head over the water and saw Deka, standing like a captain where the sea met the sand, only her feet touching the water. He looked at her over the sunlight that fell on the waves and made glitters on the blue currents, and he couldn’t see her eyes under her cap, but he liked to think that she recognized his head in the water. Juyeon turned around and swam a bit more, just a little bit, until the waves were too strong for his arms to take. 

In the evening it was time to go home. Jihee had found Deka, and was clinging on her left arm. Deka was her favourite out of all his friends. Which was good. Deka was his favourite, too.  
“Let’s go home,” Juyeon said.  
“You didn’t tell me Deka’s coming.”  
“You said you have your own friends.”  
“Deka’s my friend too.” Jihee’s eyes shifted into the crowd of his friends. “And Kevin.”  
“ _Never in my life would I allow you to befriend Kevin_.”  
Jihee sulked, and Deka laughed. “You should go home,” Deka said, swinging her left arm playfully.  
“After I talk to Kevin.”  
“ _I would disown both you and Kevin_.”  
“Fine!” Jihee pouted. “Let’s go home.”  
Juyeon turned to Deka. She raised her eyebrows. “Bye,” she said.  
Jihee tugged on his right hand, dragging her feet across the sand. He had a plastic bag full of his things and Jihee’s things on his left hand. He turned around to see Deka again, and she was looking at him with the same eyes she’d always had, the one that didn’t blink and watched him like she was curious about what he’d do, and where he’d go.  
Juyeon waved at her and she didn’t wave back. Her eyes blinked, shifted to his hand, and then back at him, still wondering. 

They waited for the bus together, Jihee and him. Jihee sat at the bus stop, playing with her phone, her skinny legs idly swinging. Juyeon crouched not far away from her and coughed. He tried to hold it in, but he couldn’t, so he tried to make it one or two deep coughs, and to make it sound as natural as he could. He coughed twice. There were dandelions on his palm when he looked at it.  
He dropped them to the ground and picked one. It was white, and soft, like he just picked it from the ground. He remembered movie scenes in which people blew on dandelions to make a wish and he wanted to laugh a little. This dandelion was something that he reared in his lungs and coughed up. There was something funny about it. None of those people had ever blown on something that came out of their own lungs.  
He blew on it. Wasted a bit more of his breath that it already took. _Here’s for how much it’s hard to breathe_. Little specks of white dropped to his feet and the ground around them. _Here’s for living just a little more to die a little more. Here’s for the girl that made you grow and how she looks at me_.  
The bus came. Jihee ran first inside, and he followed when she called for him. Behind him and everything, the sun began to set. 

. . .

There was no Deka after that day for some time. She’d left for a week out of town with her family and all of a sudden there was nothing that he could do in the entire city. Nothing to see. Nothing to look forward to. Days seemed to be longer and the pain in his chest was getting more and more annoying. He used to be able to forget about it when he had something to do, like school, and it was easy to forgive the tightness and pain in his chest when he could see Deka. It was easy to fall asleep, too. He used to be so tired after spending the whole day at the campus, falling asleep wasn’t so hard. But now he had nothing to do. Nothing to take his mind and chest off of the flowers.  
Used to, used to, used to.  
Everything felt like a lifetime ago. He hadn’t even gone through a lifetime.

His friends sometimes came for games. Sometimes he was the one that went to their place. Jihee was out most of the time. Except when Kevin dropped by.  
Younghoon was the first to come that day. Hyunjae and Eric were running late. Juyeon opened the door to his flat, finding Younghoon with a plastic bag full of soft drinks.  
“Where are the chips?” Juyeon raised his eyebrows.  
“Hyunjae,” he replied.  
They set up the game console in front of the TV after opening two bottles of soft drink. Younghoon leaned back against the sofa, sitting on the carpet with a joystick in his hands. “Where are they?”  
Juyeon shrugged. “Eric said that the traffic’s heavy.”  
“Outside is as hot as hell,” Younghoon muttered. “Let’s just play something before they’re here.”  
So they did. A game called Dragon Warfare. One of his favourites even though Hyunjae was the best at it. It made him busy enough and his mind knew that it was busy enough. It made him comfortable. There were dragons on the screen—some flying, some crawling, some walking on their hind legs. His character got in front of the biggest one that towered over him, huge, with vast wings, a total monster. It looked at him in the eyes. Juyeon couldn’t move his thumbs. It breathed fire on him, and his character died.  
“Shoot,” Younghoon mumbled. “You should’ve used that weapon, you know—the one that gets really far.”  
All Juyeon could think of was how it breathed fire. Actual fire coming out of its mouth. And his character really died.  
He thought about how he, too, coughed up flowers. It was him that would die because of it. Not anyone else.

“You think that could happen to a person?” he asked.  
“What? Dying because of a dragon?”  
“No,” Juyeon added, not breathing, “something coming out of someone’s mouth.”  
“Fire?” Younghoon frowned.  
“Flowers.”  
“What do you mean flowers?”

Juyeon put his joystick down and shifted, facing Younghoon. He waited until his chest got tighter, and tighter, until he couldn’t hold it in and he could feel the cough at the back of his throat.  
“Juyeon?” Younghoon’s frowns got deeper.  
Juyeon looked down at his lap and coughed, first one small cough, and then again, and again, and again. Flowers fell to his lap. Some rolled to his joystick. The TV reloaded the home screen again, ready to start over.  
“I mean this,” he said, looking at Younghoon’s horrified face.

The bell rang. It must be Hyunjae and Eric.


End file.
